


To Hold the Night

by aeli_kindara



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alcoholism, Angst, Character Study, Gen, POV Booker, Post-Movie: The Old Guard (2020)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:20:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25531246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeli_kindara/pseuds/aeli_kindara
Summary: Booker’s been on his own before, plenty of times.This time isn't the same.
Comments: 16
Kudos: 205





	To Hold the Night

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally going to be a little Booker POV epilogue on my first Old Guard fic, [Until the Sky Runs Out](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25476112) — his take on that story's themes. Then it got longer than I intended, and way more depressing than felt appropriate for the rather hopeful ending I'd just written — so I decided to break it out and post it as its own thing.
> 
> Title from Brandi Carlisle's "[Whatever You Do](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A1fuxNXoH4)."

Booker’s been on his own before, plenty of times.

It’s good sense in the modern world: go to ground for a while after each job. They scatter to the winds, lay low. Travel. Do whatever they do to make it through the night.

For Booker, that’s drinking.

The first couple weeks don’t feel much different from the aftermath of any job. He spends them in a haze, at a dozen different pubs scattered through London; down alleys with a trusty bottle of whatever's nearest to hand. He keeps catching himself wondering what Joe and Nicky are up to. How Andy’s recovering. Whether Nile’s gone to spy on her family yet.

Of course, it’s all the same question, because they’re all together this time.

For a member of the undying, the consequences of a booze binge are fairly academic. Booker surfaces three weeks after the Merrick job, peels himself off the pavement, and boards a train to Paris. He keeps a bolthole there. Maybe he should stay away from old haunts, cover his tracks — but there’s part of him that likes the familiar.

There’s part of him that wants to be traceable. Just in case.

He’s never going to see Andy again.

He doesn’t break down crying until he’s inside the door. Then it’s instantaneous and absolute — great gasping sobs heaving themselves out of somewhere deep in his gut. _Have a little faith, Book,_ she’d said, but that’s the one thing he can’t do. It wouldn’t even need to be a bullet. A careless driver. A virus; does her mortal body have immunity to the modern stew of disease? Cancer — Andy’s not too young for that; he _knows._ The wound he gave her, gone septic —

He feels his face twist in helpless grief.

He’s slumped against the wall and shaking, emptied of tears, when he realizes that he’s felt this way before. Once, long ago, the people he loved told him he’d betrayed them. Now he’s turned around and betrayed the people who love him.

After that, the drinking feels like a foregone conclusion.

Where six months go, he’ll never know. This isn’t like the other times; there’s no new job waiting for him on the other side. Not for a hundred years. It’s just Booker and his thoughts, his loneliness and his useless pride.

For the first time, he starts to understand — to really feel in his gut — Andy’s desperate need to do good.

It isn’t morals. Not really. It might be for someone like Nicky, but that’s Nicky — cold-blooded enough to see the world for its absolutes. Andy and Booker and Joe aren’t like that; they’ve got the demons of pride to shut up or shut out. They need to be seen, somehow. To be real — to _matter._

Joe’s always had Nicky, as long as he’s been like this; he’s always been the center of someone’s world. Booker used to think that’s what set him and Andy apart — knowing loneliness. But now —

He’s never had any idea. Not really. Andy spent thousands of years like this; no wonder she scraped the earth for purpose. Seized at it with her bare hands wherever she could. Booker’s gone a few blinks of an ordinary human lifetime, and he’s already drowning.

Occasionally, when he’s on the right knife edge of bitter and buzzed, it occurs to him: _I could do it on my own._ He knows as much about modern tech as anyone else on the team. He could track down the jobs. Entry and exit would be trickier, but — he could pick his battles. He could fight them himself.

He can’t shield himself as well as Copley could, but that’s fine. Might even bring Copley down on him. Let Copley stop him, then — or bring him in, or whatever he thinks he’s gotta do.

_I’ll start tomorrow,_ he tells himself, every few nights. _Fresh start. Fuck this retirement shit. I’ll wake up, I’ll drink a glass of water, I’ll do the research. I’ll find a job._

He doesn’t.

\---

He’s too drunk to notice when the dreams begin to change.

Alcohol keeps them at bay anyway, or at least keeps him from remembering them in the morning. He worked that one out early, shared it with Nile before they parted ways. Who knows if it’s knowledge she’ll use. She doesn’t really seem the type.

He never really talks about it — talked about it — with the others. They must have known, but they never asked. He told Joe and Nicky, just once, and saw they look they traded — Andy wasn’t there yet, back then. He got the message, though: they had loved her, the furious woman in his head. All of them had loved her. Bearing the knowledge of her suffering was the least he could do, maybe, to make up for the fact that he was a sorry substitute.

The least he could do — but more than he can take. Two hundred years of drowning with Quynh every night is two hundred too many.

So he drinks his nights dreamless, and if there are signs, he misses them.

He just fumbles his door open one morning, bottle smashed on the floor behind him, pistol in his hand, and she’s there.

“Booker,” she says. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

He hesitates. He knows her too well; he doesn’t lower his gun.

She could want anything. To hurt him — to hurt _Andy._ Revenge on the people who abandoned her, or on the people who condemned her, or on the entire world. She was one of them once; does that change, in five hundred years in a box? He’s seen her torment, glimpses of it, and it was almost too much to bear.

How that furious heartbeat can rest so calmly within the woman standing in his kitchen — gently sipping water from his glass — he has no idea. 

But there’s one thought that rattles through his weary, booze-soaked brain, louder and louder, drowning everything else: _I’m not alone._

He swallows.

He says, “Hey, Quynh.”

**Author's Note:**

> Rebloggable on [tumblr](https://gravelghosts.tumblr.com/post/624728050732564480/old-guard-fic-to-hold-the-night), if that's your jam.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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